Column: The culture of violence
Brett Morris, CT Columnist
April 17, 2007
First, I would like to offer my deepest sympathies to those affected by yesterday's tragedy. No words can describe it. I never thought I would be attending a school with the record for deadliest school shooting in history.
The only personal account of the tragedy that I have is the following: Upon returning from working at my job in the morning I checked my e-mail. The only message sent out at that time was the news of the first shooting at the dorm. I didn't think much of it, so I got ready to attend my first class at 10:10. When I was walking across the Drillfield, I noticed something was wrong. Many students were on their cell phones. Then students came running out of Norris Hall with their hands on their heads and police shouted for everyone to get off the Drillfield. I went back to my dorm to observe events from television and the Internet.
Though the facts will continue to come forth, and the particulars of this case will have to be examined, it's necessary to ask why these types of school shootings seem to be happening at an increasing rate over the past couple of decades. These are clearly not isolated incidents that can be traced to a few people, but a cancer upon our society. Why do people think it's okay to use violence to solve their problems? Is there something inherent in our culture that says it's okay to murder people?
Is there a connection between violence overseas and violence at home? Are there ideals embedded in our culture that say it's okay to use violence? Therefore not only will people not hesitate to pick up a gun and shoot up a school, but also that it's okay to go bomb another country? On the same day that two students at Columbine shot and murdered thirteen people before committing suicide, President Clinton dropped more bombs than any other single day during the Kosovo war. So why does mainstream intellectual culture and discussion say that it's okay for Clinton to bomb people, but it's not okay for two students to shoot up a high school?
The United States has an extremely violent history, based on genocide and slavery. Any nation founded on this premise is bound to suffer from cultural ideas that violence used to achieve a cause is justified by the simple fact that we are doing it. Europe suffered immensely from internal violence. They murdered each other for centuries. The only reason they stopped was because the next time around, there would be no Europe. Americans haven't yet come to terms with the violence internal within our borders or with the violence we export around the world through invasions and violent actions. If we want to be good global citizens, we must come to terms with the use of our violence and its effects.
Since the end of World War II, the United States has been at war almost literally non-stop with one country or another. If Americans could come to terms with our history of violence, would Americans be so willing to accept violence overseas? Would the level of violence within our borders be reduced?
Of course, most people don't want violence. So instead, a complex propaganda system is developed within the confines of doctrinally accepted ideas in order to condition citizens into accepting violence for the purposes of foreign interventions that benefit state power, not citizens. This leads people to internalize violence, and can lead to individuals carrying out horrendous crimes at home. If a man is taught that it's okay for his state to unjustifiably bomb another (coupled with noble visions and rhetoric, of course), then he may also assume it's okay to beat his wife. You have to turn people into unfeeling machines so that violence can be carried out at a whim. Witness the correlation between anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment and the support for Middle East intervention. If you can convince people that Muslims are inherently violent and that they're out to get us, then of course it makes sense to go fight them "over there." The effect of racist hatred against these people has been horrendous.
I posit no direct connection between the shootings at Virginia Tech and the other issues discussed here. Rather, I want to draw attention to the larger, philosophical ideas between violence in our nation and violence overseas. I hope we can all begin to think seriously about these issues in the wake of this tragedy.